BlockThreat - Week 1, 2026
Unleash Protocol | PRXVT | Valinity | Doomcat
Greetings!
We are starting the new year with nearly $4 million in losses across four incidents, with the majority stemming from the Unleash Protocol hack on the Story chain.
Thanks to a detailed incident report published by the Unleash Protocol team, we now have visibility into a familiar phishing attack pattern:
- Compromise of a privileged user via Telegram.
- Distribution of a link to a look-alike Safe interface to other multisig signers.
- A specially crafted transaction that reduced the consensus threshold to just 1.
- Profit!
The critical control that could have detected this earlier beyond the initial account compromise was a multisig transaction verification. Such verification may have flagged the malicious proposal before execution. It is a painful lesson, but one the broader DeFi industry will hopefully adopt quickly.
You can find post-mortems, indicators, and other details for Unleash Protocol, PRXVT, Valinity, and other compromises in the premium section below.
Let’s dive into the news!
News
- Ledger confirms customer data leaked in third-party Global-e breach.
- Crypto exploit triage group SEAL sees uptick in tickets in 2025.
Crime
- Bitfinex Hacker Behind $11 Billion Bitcoin Heist Credits Trump for Early Prison Release.
- Crypto Thieves Move Offline to Terrorize Investors at Home by Bloomberg.
- The Grisliest Bitcoin and Crypto Wrench Attacks That Grabbed Headlines in 2025.
Policy
Phishing
- Hundreds of MetaMask wallets drained: What to check before you ‘update’.
- Scam Sniffer 2025: Crypto Phishing Losses Fall 83% to $84 Million - Scam Sniffer.
Scams
- A user set up a bot that has been front running shitcoin launches and making the rug-deployers lose money and unable to launch.
- A quick look into omnerausd (@ColeJacksonUS) and @Shade_L2 ICO scam by Specter.
Malware
- DarkSpectre: Unmasking the Threat Actor Behind 8.8 Million Infected Browsers by Tuval Admoni,Gal Hachamov (Koi).
- New GlassWorm malware wave targets Macs with trojanized crypto wallets.
Media
- Behind the Keyboard with 2025 Watson of the Year, 0xSimao by Sherlock.
- Trust X - Circuit Breakers: The Magic Pill to DeFi’s Security Problem?
Contests
- Capture The Funds - Certora Next-Gen CTF. Congratulations winners!
Research
- An AI security awesome list / learning journey by Bernhard Mueller.
- Mage: Cracking Elliptic Curve Cryptography with Cross-Axis Transformers.
- A Practical Guide to Finding Soundness Bugs in ZK Circuits..
- Returndata Bombing RAI’s Liquidation Engine - A Critical Bug Worth $0 by Trust Security. As always not without a controversy.
- Second-order effects of advances in AI auditors by Trust Security. We are already seeing them with a spike in old code exploitation.
- Let LLM analyse an Etherscan verified contract > LLM has code execution capabilities > LLM listens to the instructions part of the verified source code comments > get rekt. A dangerous exploitation strategy by pcaversaccio.
- What is a Blockchain, Actually? by Kian Paimani. A short online book containing all that I have learned and know about Web3 and blockchain in the last 7 years.
Tools
- Detect Go’s silent arithmetic bugs with go-panikint.
- Onboardme - a highly experimental tool to help you understand smart contracts faster. Repo here. Pretty cool graphics, Hackers meets blockchain.
Hacks
Unleash Protocol Compromise
Date: December 29, 2025
Attack Vector: Multisig Hijacking
Impact: $3,900,000
Chain: Story
References:
- https://x.com/peckshieldalert/status/2005947786026471897
- https://x.com/CyversAlerts/status/2006003209496559796
- https://x.com/UnleashProtocol/status/2005907998691229933
- https://x.com/m13_digital/status/2005984589873856811
- https://x.com/UnleashProtocol/status/2008918529777803514
Laundering:
Exploit:
DoomCat Compromise
Date: December 30, 2025
Attack Vector: Price Oracle Manipulation
Impact: $5,000
Chain: Ethereum
References:
Exploit:
PRXVT Compromise
Date: January 1, 2026
Attack Vector: Unknown
Chain: Base
References:
Valinity Compromise
Date: January 2, 2026
Attack Vector: Logic Error
Impact: $63,000
Chain: Ethereum
References:
Exploit: